


days like these

by dilangley



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Between 4x15 and 4x16, Canon Compliant, F/M, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Fluff against a backdrop of angst, That Isn't Really Fake At All, barchie, just the way we like it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-15
Updated: 2020-03-15
Packaged: 2021-02-28 16:35:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23160298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dilangley/pseuds/dilangley
Summary: The time Archie and Betty spent together between Episode 4x15 and 4x16 when the fake dating was still in full swing.Or Archie and Betty spend a perfect day away from Riverdale just being themselves.
Relationships: Archie Andrews/Betty Cooper
Comments: 13
Kudos: 105





	days like these

**Author's Note:**

> No beta. We die like men.

_They kissed in the music room. Archie and Betty._

_It was a stupid plan. It was a stupid plan in a crazy, blood-soaked town where nothing could ever be simple. It was murder mysteries and angry preppies and layers of conspiracies._

_What it wasn’t was a lie._

_Whether they meant it to be or not._

Betty woke Archie up at three a.m. like she used to do when they were middle schoolers, just old enough and silly enough to think this counted as sneaking out. The insistent tapping of the pebbles on the window stopped as he wrestled it open. Betty stood not in her pajamas but in jeans and a windbreaker. 

“What are you doing right now?” She asked, and then she smiled.

He felt his smile too. “Meeting you in the kitchen.”

He reached for his sweatpants but snagged jeans instead. He shrugged into them and a clean tee shirt and stopped by the bathroom to brush his teeth. Betty had already retrieved the spare key and let herself in. She was doodling on the notepad on the kitchen island.

When she looked at him, the memory swelled up, not of the music room, not of a steamy car, but of them on the front walk of her house after homecoming. Beautiful, radiant, soft, with big tears filling her eyes, Betty had asked him if he loved her, and he had said of course before filling the air with buts and excuses. He couldn’t know, but he figured he hadn’t been the only one crying in his bedroom that night.

 _Ask me again_ , he thought. _I’ll get the answer right this time._

He deflected from his own traitorous inner voice. “Is something wrong with Jughead?”

Her mouth tightened. Her smile wobbled. “No. He’s got enough food for the weekend down in the bunker and the complete _Twilight Zone_ collection on DVD.”

“Good.”

“Archie,” she said his name softly, gently. “Do you have plans today?”

It was stupid to say no. The Community Center paperwork was stacked all around the office, the Andrews’ Construction trailer hadn’t been cleaned in weeks, and he needed to go over his applications. In the evening, Veronica would want him to show up grinning and free-wheeling and acting like every other teenager who could turn any spare moment into sex. 

“No. Nothing,” he said.

“Want to go somewhere with me?” 

This was no text message where he could backtrack his first, instinctive reply. It came out before he could stop it.

“Anywhere.” 

They left a note on the kitchen counter. _Gone for the day. Be back tonight. Love, Archie._ They got in the jalopy and gassed up at the only 24 hour pumps on the Northside before heading out of town. The radio was busted. It was on Archie’s to-do list, but time was in short supply. He apologized. Betty laughed.

“I’ll fix it for you soon,” she promised. The wind whipped at her hair, stole strands from her ponytail and set them free. Without the harsh order surrounding it, her face grew younger again. Archie glanced over every few minutes to watch the transformation. By the time the gas gauge flirted with E again, Betty looked her age once more.

The sign for Hammondsport, NY had a dramatic carving of a bunch of grapes. They parked at the parking lot on the edge of the dock district just as the sun crept over the horizon of Keuka Lake. 

“That’s beautiful,” Betty said. “Look at that sunrise.”

Archie did. Somehow with Riverdale too far behind him to be seen in the rearview mirror, he could not remember why it seemed so important. How had that life become his normal? How had he become a man with the weight of two worlds on his shoulders? It felt fantastical, fictional. 

It felt like way more of a lie than kissing Betty in the music room had. 

“I used to get up early to do my homework when the sun was still rising,” she said. 

“I know,” he said. When she looked startled, he continued, “I’d get up and go for morning runs freshmen year, and I’d see your light on.”

“Freshmen year.” Her tone turned teasing. “The year before Archie got hot.”

He nudged her with his elbow. “Hey, my mom said I was a handsome boy. With my braces.”

“And your rubber band bracelets.”

“They were cool. You had them too.”

“Because you did!” 

“We were a mess,” he said, chuckling, and she nodded. A yawn split her mouth open, and Archie answered with one of his own. The few stolen hours of sleep in the middle of last night had never been enough. He was suddenly aware of his exhaustion, older than just today, and the nippy early spring air, still crisp like winter.

“C’mhere.” He motioned for her to scoot over. She hesitated for a second, her eyes on his, wide and questioning, but then she closed them and snuggled into him. “Take a nap. We can’t have a big, fun day if we’re tired.”

“Okay, Arch.” 

They used to do this. He still remembered the first time Mrs. Cooper snapped at them to stop. They were thirteen, curled up under the same blanket watching _Jurassic Park_ , behaving the same way they had on many winter evenings before this one. Heck, they’d even had sleepovers in giant, elaborate pillow forts leftover from a day of playing with Jughead and Kevin. But that day, Mrs. Cooper had seen something different and had made them sit on opposite sides of the couch.

He remembered laughing and expecting Betty to join in, but her giggle didn’t reach her eyes.

He understood better now. At some point, your next door neighbor becomes a boy and your daughter becomes the girl next door. Alice Cooper had just been the first one to see it. 

Or at least, she had seen it before him.

He fell asleep now too, against Betty. His sleep was dreamless and instant, and when he woke up, it was with a snort from his wide-open mouth. He blinked into the blindingly bright sun as Betty stirred against him.

“Oh my god.” She stretched, squeaked. “I actually slept.”

Her desk lamp glowed late most lights, so he understood. “Me too.”

“God, that’s good.” She rolled her neck from side to side. The lake rippled under the brilliant sunshine, and people had taken to the sidewalks with strollers and dogs and hand weights. Riverdale hadn’t looked like this in years -- had it ever looked like this? -- and Archie grinned.

“So what do you want to do today?”

They abandoned the jalopy and strolled until they found a breakfast shop. Local art covered the walls, soft watercolors of skipjacks next to edgy collages of shouting mouths, and the kid who came to take their orders couldn’t have been a day over twelve. She had on an oversized Grateful Dead tee shirt and a bright pink Hello Kitty headband.

“Do your parents own this place?” Betty asked, polite small talk as ingrained into her as the napkin neatly folded in her lap.

“Yes, and on Saturday mornings, I get to be a ‘big help.’” The girl’s sarcasm didn’t change the brightness in her eyes. “I get to keep all my tips though, so keep in mind that I’m saving for concert tickets.”

“You got it.”

They drank orange juice -- hand-squeezed and full of pulp -- and dark coffee. Archie ordered an omelet full of hashbrowns and peppers, Betty ordered a breakfast bowl full of power foods, and they shared a plate of strawberry French Toast. Their forks darted in and out of each other’s space while they talked.

“The Lumineers are not really folk music. They’re just pop branded as folk to seem original,” Betty said. 

She sounded like Jughead. It was a jarring moment still, even after all these many months. When they were little, back when Jughead was his best friend and Betty was also his best friend, Archie had been their center, the only link between two disparate personalities. Betty had been sunshine, driven and passionate, and Jughead had been moonlight, reflective and unflappable. Their blurring these days had been hard to watch. 

He hated those moments when he could not tell whose voice was whose because they spoke as one.

“I’ve always liked The Lumineers,” he said mildly.

“Oh, me too,” Betty said. She paused. Archie wondered what she was thinking. “I didn’t mean I didn’t. I don’t really care what genre they are. The acoustic version of ‘Cleopatra’ is my favorite.”

“I don’t think I’ve heard it.”

He thought that would be that, but after they paid for breakfast, she pulled it up on her phone and played it as they walked beside the lake. He was certain he had heard the original song before, but he knew it hadn’t sounded like this: just a man and his guitar. He liked it.

“You could play it,” she said. He noticed it then, the way their hands swung between them as they walked, close enough to touch. His fingers skirted past hers, so close, almost touching. He realized he was holding his breath. 

“Yeah. I could.”

They walked until the dock district became a town square. Neither of them had the money for the boutique shops there, but they went in anyway. They explored, chatted with clerks, and bought a bag of organic grapes to feed the ducks. Archie dutifully pinched them in half while Betty tossed them off the small bridge to the water’s edge. She smiled as the ducks gathered, carefully found ways to make sure the littlest ones got their fair share of grapes.

They kept walking until they came upon a string quartet playing pop hits in the gazebo of the square. The other, mostly older people gathered there had lawn chairs and picnic baskets, wine bottles and plastic glasses, so Betty and Archie improvised. She picked out a spot on the grass while Archie jogged down to a brick 7-11 intended to look charming. He bought two cans of Coke, a bag of hot fries, and a share size pack of peanut M&Ms. 

It wasn’t sophisticated as they laid on their stomachs on the itchy grass and listened to the music. Archie listened to the cellist, and as the strings marched out their notes, his palms began to sweat. It was the Fourth of July sophomore summer in the back of a car. There were heart-shaped sunglasses on the dashboard and a salmon-colored bra draped over his shoulder. He was losing his virginity to a woman he called Ms. Grundy. 

He swiped his hand through his hair and sipped his drink.

“Hey.” And then Betty had leaned over into him and fixed him in her gaze. Her big eyes had that problem-solving sympathy in them, and he tried too late to rearrange his face.

“It’s nothing,” he said. The last thing he wanted was to ruin anything today with talk of yesterday. Nothing good laid in the last few years. Nothing at all.

“It’s not,” she said. She took his hand, laced her fingers through his. “But we don’t have to talk about it.”

She didn’t let go, and he held on to her until the air coming in and out his lungs was normal again, until the cold chill down his spine dissipated. He put his head against their held hands, whispered a thank you across the back of her knuckles. She gave him a little squeeze, and that was that.

Some of the older people began to dance along to the music. Archie loved the way they moved in perfect coordination, each couple practiced together and completely comfortable. Each pair seemed to know exactly how they would dance, when to dip, when to step apart, when the partner would bust an embarrassing solo move.

“Son, you’d better scoot your girl around the dance floor, or she’s going to find someone who can,” said a bushy-eyebrowed gentleman with a wink.

“You heard the man,” Archie said, and he dragged Betty out. They were clumsy and uncertain. They had only danced together once before, not counting Kevin’s musical stage and dramatic choreography, and it had been the night everything between them fell apart. 

But this time, Betty had no apprehension on her face, no nervous pressing of her fingernails to her palms. She smiled, and he smiled, and they danced without any other thoughts. 

When the quartet said their farewells and the lawn slowly emptied, Betty and Archie picked up pieces of trash left behind and tossed them into the receptacles. 

Shamelessly, before the last of the light could burn out, they went back to the same little place they ate breakfast. The little girl was nowhere to be found, but an adult version who could only be her father took their order. They ate grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup, two of the cheapest things on the menu, and drank water, Archie’s with lemon and Betty’s with a slice of orange. He never would have thought of that.

This time, he didn’t let her pull her wallet out of her bag.

“I’ve got it,” he said, dropping the money on the table. She flushed pink under the dim lights. 

There was no choice after dinner. They had to go home. Betty offered to drive this time, and he was the one, sitting back, watching the world change. As the scenery grew more familiar, he did not feel like he was coming home. 

Serial killers. Gargoyles. Drugs. Death at every turn. A beautiful, glamorous socialite who called him Archiekins.

That wasn’t supposed to be his life.

Football. Guitar. Milkshakes at Pop’s. School dances. The girl next door who said “Oh Arch” in a voice like music.

He realized his knee was bouncing. He stopped it.

When Betty pulled into his driveway and parked the car in the garage, they sat together, staring straight ahead. When they got out of this car, everything would go back to the nightmare that was normal. They would unveil Jughead’s plan and gallop on through their senior year. 

“Thank you for today,” Betty said. “I needed it.”

“Me too.”

“I’d better go to the woods and check on Jughead. He’s called. A few times.” She held up her phone. He saw the little Do Not Disturb indicator on in the corner, and his heart kick-flipped. He hadn’t seen her do that, but he had done the same thing himself, right after breakfast.

“Yeah. Veronica too.”

Betty gathered her bag up, unfolded herself from the jalopy, and gave him a little wave. 

But he couldn’t just let her go without trying to put it into words.

“Betty?”

She turned to look at him. 

“This won’t all last forever, okay?” 

He worried she wouldn’t know what he meant, that Jughead’s girl would agree and smile and leave without understanding him. 

“You think there’s days like today somewhere else in my future?” It sounded like a joke, a sarcastic, wry twist to her tone, but then her bottom lip wobbled, tears glistened against her eyelashes. 

“Yeah. I promise.”

They said good night without touching, and they both returned to their lives. 

It was never quite the same though. They had rediscovered something that one blissful, normal, perfect day, and they would never, could never, forget it again.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



End file.
